My next project is going to be another pair, this time two different versions of the Hansa-Brandenburg C.I. The plane was Austria's first armed two-seater, designed an built specifically to carry a defensive gun. It was designed by a young engineer named Ernst Heinkel, who would gain fame between the wars and in World War Two with his own company. The original design moved the observer to the rear seat and supplied him with a ring-mounted Schwarzlose machine gun. Hansa-Brandenburg only built 84 of them, but they were licensed out and Phönix built around 400 while UFAG (Ungarische Flugzeugfabrik Alles Gesellschaft, or Hungarian Aircraft Public Company) built more than 800. Phönix and UFAG both experimented with giving the observer a better field of fire by placing him and his gun on a tower. While this worked as far as shooting went, it made the plane less stable and stopped communication between pilot and observer. Since in German and Austrian practice the observer was the officer, and thus aircraft commander, it made it difficult for him to tell the pilot where to point the plane. Ultimately they supplied a second gun for the pilot to shoot, mounted above the wing in a streamline pod sometimes referred to as a "baby coffin". For some reason the version with the tower has come to be known as "Hansa-Brandenburg C.I UFAG", which leads some people to ask "What's an UFAG?"
This is what I'm facing:
